Feeling very stupid!

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An old friend has a birthday party coming up, and his wife (who is organising it) said that he wasn’t expecting gifts but would welcome donations of drinks. I wanted to get him something nice, but I wasn’t sure whether, if I took a bottle or two along, they would just get put out on the tables to be shared out and if I bought something special, he might not even get any of it! So in the end I decided to get both – a couple of bottles of more ordinary (but hopefully still nice!) wine to share around, and something else to wrap up as a gift for him to enjoy at home later. I went to the wine warehouse to use the £10 off voucher they had sent me, and chose some interesting-sounding but not too expensive bottles. Then I looked for something a bit more special. They had all the champagne stacked up in one area, rosé wines in another, then reds and whites from different parts of the world. And among the stacks of white wines I saw Châteuneuf du Pape. Now I thought Châteuneuf du Pape was a red wine, and indeed I had noticed a cluster of bottles in the red section, so when I saw this I thought ‘Oh that’s interesting, they must have produced a white as well’ and knowing that Châteuneuf du Pape has a good reputation I thought it would make a nice gift. But when I got it home and showed my partner what I had bought he said “But Châteuneuf du Pape is a red wine” and when he held it up to the light it was clearly red. I felt very stupid. I had to go back today and get a refund and then buy something else that seemed promising and hopefully will be good. *In my defence, I just read on Wikipedia that Châteuneuf du Pape can be either red or white, or even rosé – but apparently red is most common, accounting for 15 of every 16 bottles produced. All rights reserved. © Text and image copyright Fleur 2024.